Start your week with LaRouchePAC's live Monday Update for the latest news, background, and our efforts to bring the United States on board the shifting global paradigm towards win-win cooperation and a just, new economic order. Hosted by Matthew Ogden.

THE LEAD

Wall Street is on the edge of another financial tsunami, and this is driving the world towards general war, with the latest provocations in Ukraine serving as the immediate trigger for confrontation with Russia.

As Citibank was the latest of the Wall Street too-big-to-fail banks to post serious fourth-quarter losses, and as the Wall Street banks were announcing 50,000 layoffs, half-way around the globe the Ukrainian government was launching new provocations against Russia, meeting with top NATO generals and announcing a draft to call up 100,000 new troops to launch a military offensive against its own citizens in eastern Ukraine.

Russian officials have made clear that, while they are pushing for a diplomatic solution to the crisis in eastern Ukraine—starting with an immediate cease-fire and a resumption of direct talks between Kiev and the eastern Ukrainian leaders—they will not cave in to NATO blackmail. In statements on Wednesday, both Foreign Minister Lavrov and Putin spokesman Peskov made clear that they understand the NATO actions to be nothing short of an all-out campaign to overthrow Putin and make Russia the victim of the latest color revolution. This kind of madness can lead the world to thermonuclear extinction at any moment.

Russia has boosted its strategic strike capability and announced a new military doctrine, making clear that they understand the nature of the asymmetric assault on the current Russian leadership.

Lyndon LaRouche, in discussion with his Policy Committee colleagues on Wednesday, emphasized that Russia is prepared to respond preemptively to the ongoing US and NATO provocations, and this can mean the obliteration of the United States if the current Obama trajectory is not ended now. That, he clarified, means crushing Wall Street, which is the driving force behind the imminent war danger.

President Obama's Tuesday night State of the Union Address contained blatant provocations against both Russia and China, and his words did not go unnoticed in Moscow and Beijing. It was a disgusting Nuremberg Rally, with Democrats groveling in front of a president who has destroyed the party and the country—on behalf of Wall Street and London.

LaRouche was blunt:

"Obama's State of the Union address was clinically insane, filled with the most corrupt, rotten, foolish, idiotic statements. And what was worse, the audience was cheering him on like a pack of idiots. It was an echo of the Nuremberg Rallies of Nazi Germany."

"This is why we are facing an immediate danger of thermonuclear war."

Wall Street and London are not only bankrupt, facing an immediate blowout of their quadrillion-dollar derivatives bubble. They are driven by the belief that war can be the solution to their imminent demise, which makes them pathologically dangerous to the very survival of the human race.

It is in this context that the Wall Street rally by the LaRouche Political Action Committee on January 20 brought reality to the heart of the financial district. Thousands of passers-by were confronted with the reality of the Wall Street bankruptcy, the war danger, and the urgent need to revive the Hamiltonian alternative, starting with the immediate reinstatement of Glass- Steagall.

It is that option, alone, that can set the world as a whole, back on a course of development, which is now already underway with the initiatives of the BRICS countries, led by China. At this week's World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, the role of China in launching a new global economic paradigm is being openly admitted.

The vital question is whether the reality of the imminent war danger and the role of Wall Street and London in pushing the planet to the brink of annihilation will be acknowledged and acted upon in time.

SUPPORTING MATERIAL

Yesterday's annual year-in-review press conference by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and a lengthy interview with President Vladimir Putin's press secretary, Dmitri Peskov, were timed in such a way, that each could respond to Barack Obama's nasty bluster against Russia during his State of the Union, January 20th. Each of these Russian officials counterposed to Obama's delusions of power, the reality of the rising strength and influence of the Eurasian nations and the BRICS alliance.

This is what Obama said:

"We're upholding the principle that bigger nations can't bully the small—by opposing Russian aggression, supporting Ukraine's democracy, and reassuring our NATO allies. Last year, as we were doing the hard work of imposing sanctions along with our allies, some suggested that Mr. Putin's aggression was a masterful display of strategy and strength. Well, today, it is America that stands strong and united with our allies, while Russia is isolated, with its economy in tatters."

Peskov, in an interview to the nationally circulated Argumenty i Fakty newspaper, reiterated what Putin himself said last month, that"it is not a matter of Crimea or Ukraine; if it had not been Crimea, they would have come up with another pretext" for "being on Russia's case."

Peskov charged that people in the West were

"trying to portray Putin as a party to the [internal Ukrainian] conflict, to isolate him in international politics, to suffocate Russia economically in their own interests, and to get Putin overthrown, while at the same time demanding that he settle the crisis in a neighboring country."

Asked about a recent remark by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, that Putin would not be invited to this year's G-7 summit, Peskov noted that Putin was not expecting that. "On the other hand," he added,"one could ask what the point of the G-7 is, anyway; what decisions can it take without the participation of Russia, India, and China?"

Lavrov took up Russian-American relations several times in his two-hour press conference, stating in his opening remarks:"We hear a lot of statements by our Western partners, about the need to isolate Russia further. U.S. President Obama found it appropriate to state this yesterday in his State of the Union message."

But, countered Lavrov,"Such attempts are fruitless. Russia will never take the road of self-isolation, suspiciousness, and looking for enemies."

As examples of Russia's foreign policy outreach, Lavrov cited, besides Moscow's diplomatic efforts related to Ukraine, its engagement in multilateral formats such as the G20, the BRICS, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. As host of the summits of the latter two organizations this summer in Ufa, Lavrov said that Russia would seek to animate their operations."In the BRICS framework, this means above all the coordination of economic documents such as an economic partnership strategy and a road map for investment cooperation."

Lavrov went on to discuss Russia's engagement with other nations of the Asia-Pacific Region, China in particular, as well as the offers from the new Eurasian Economic Union for free-trade relations with the European Union.

Returning to the problem of Obama, in answer to a question about Russia-U.S. ties, Lavrov said:

"The Americans have taken the pathway toward confrontation, and are not in the least critical in evaluating their own actions. Yesterday's speech by President Obama shows a philosophy centered on just one thing: 'we're number one, and everyone else should recognize this,' which is slightly old-fashioned and out of whack with today's realities. The foreign policy philosophy of the USA is even more aggressive: it wants to be not merely primus inter pares, but to dominate the world."

Lavrov said he thought that reality was already forcing Washington to realize that this doesn't work, because international cooperation really is required on a whole range of matters. Furthermore, he said, returning to the theme of the rest of the world's development,"the objective development of the world and the appearance of powerful centers of economic growth and financial influence, and also centers of political influence, is an objective process and cannot be left out of account."

A joint statement by the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine (the "Normandy format," initiated by French President Hollande last spring), after their talks yesterday evening in Berlin, called for urgent implementation of the conditions agreed upon for eastern Ukraine in the September 2014 talks of the Minsk Contact Group (Russia, Kiev, self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, and the OSCE). In recent days, fighting has flared throughout the Donbass, with fierce clashes at the Donetsk airport and heavy shelling of Donetsk and the nearby town of Gorlovka.

The ministers called on all parties to the conflict

"to cease hostilities and withdraw heavy weapons in accordance with the Line of Contact, as stipulated in the Annex to the Minsk Memorandum, September 19, 2014, to be monitored by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission and supported by agreed mechanisms on the ground."

They called for a meeting of the Minsk group in the immediate days ahead, saying that there could be no heads-of- state meeting on Ukraine, as discussed for holding in Astana, Kazakhstan, until "tangible progress" on implementing the September accords occurs, in the form of a ceasefire, humanitarian relief, and prisoner exchanges. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, according to wire services, said after the talks that there had been no breakthrough, but some significant progress.

In his major press conference yesterday, before departing Moscow for the Berlin talks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had emphasized that the settlement must occur between the regime holding power in Kiev, and those Ukrainians controlling parts of eastern Ukraine; he rejected the portrayal, by many foreign journalists, of Russia as a direct party to the fighting. Lavrov underscored that the demarcation line in the Minsk accords was agreed to by all sides, so even if more territory has come under DPR/LPR control since then, the pull-back of heavy weaponry must occur with that line as the reference point. He said that there had been no disagreement between Moscow and Kiev over where the Sept. 19 disengagement line runs, so when President Petro Poroshenko recently claimed that President Putin's Jan. 15 letter on implementing the disengagement had not indicated what line was involved, "that was untrue." He pointed out that a Joint Center for Monitoring and Coordination had been set up, as proposed by Poroshenko, and is staffed by Russian officers and the OSCE, but now it should function.

In discussing Crimea's separation from Ukraine last March, as well as ongoing social conflicts within Ukraine, Lavrov called on Poroshenko to disassociate himself from the racist statements of Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh, a current member of Parliament, during the past year. To a BBC correspondent who demanded if Russia would stop the flow of "troops and weapons" into Ukraine, Lavrov replied,"As I say each time, if you assert this with such certainty, show us the facts."

While the Normandy format foreign ministers met in Berlin, a UN Security Council session on Ukraine heard U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power rave that Putin's latest peace proposals were merely "an occupation plan." Speaking after talks in Washington with EU High Representative Federica Mogherini, Secretary of State John Kerry used similar language, accusing the Russian-backed separatists (DPR/LPR) of making "a blatant land-grab" since September.

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